Data Science Institute

Sam Birch received his B.A. in Geophysics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004 and his PhD in Planetary Sciences from Cornell University in 2018. He then received a 51 Pegasi b Research Fellowship from the Heising-Simons Foundation for research conducted at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology under the direction of Taylor Perron. Sam's research group explores the rich diversity of physical processes that shape planetary surfaces and climates across the Solar System. With spacecraft observations, mathematical and computational models, and laboratory experiments, we seek to understand how these many surfaces came to be, and what that implies for their ever-changing planetary climates.

How does your research, teaching, or other work relate to data or computational science?

My group analyzes large planetary datasets of various solar system worlds, and is employing machine learning methods to better leverage that data. Planetary datasets are extremely complex, and we have (and continue to) develop new tools to get the most out of the precious and hard to acquire data we have.